Drupalaton 2014 in Hungary, at the largest lake in Central Europe

26 Aug 2014

Wow my Hungarian friends - you have done it again! Two weeks ago, I spent a long weekend at Drupalaton, a Drupal camp in Hungary with the difference that it also served as a short relaxing break. It was the perfect combination of a holiday and work with the beautiful surroundings of Central Europe’s largest lake Balaton.

I was very excited to return to the country after the amazing Drupal Developer Days in Szeged event that I went to in March. It was also filled with meeting amazing people from all around the world, learning and sharing knowledge and connecting with so many inspiring people.

At both events the thing that really stood out for me was the great hospitality shown by the Hungarians I met there. I have really been humbled by how friendly and hospitable they have been, and all of the time they put into making the event so amazing for all the attendees.

This was the fifth year that large Drupal events have been taking place in the country, but the second where the language hasn’t been exclusively in Hungarian. Last year’s event brought people from Romania, Serbia and other neighbouring countries but this year we had a much more international event with people from Austria, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Spain, & the UK in attendance.

Patchy, the sprint whale. Unofficial @drupalaton mascot with @ChandeepKhosa @brynvertesi @rteijeiro pic.twitter.com/AxydLT3JiO

— Bryn Vertesi (@brynvertesi) August 9, 2014

The team that made it happen

Tamás ‘York’ Pintér, was the main organiser and lives in the area of the camp, Zsófi Major co-ordinated many aspects of the event including community outreach over social media & sponsorship management, István Csáki, helped to create the website and other support, Bálint Fekete, made some amazing design work (in particular the innovative scroll on the website where the boat moves across the page which I spent far too long playing with!).

Also on the team were Gábor Hojtsy, (Drupal 8 multilingual initiative lead) helping with event-marketing, István 'PP' Palócz who helped with finances (and helped me learning some basic Hungarian phrases) and last but not least Tamás ‘TeeCee’ Szügyi, the photographer who documented the great event.

Some numbers

In the recent newsletter to all attendees from the organisers the following statistics were disclosed.

"We are really proud of the following numbers, so let us share with you:
Our 79 attendees came from 13 countries from all over the world, and only a bit more than half of them were from Hungary. This lucky number is significant for us, as Drupalaton started as a local Drupalcamp, and now we can proudly say that we are on the big Drupalmap :)"

You spent more than 1420 minutes (almost 24 hours) on 8 workshops with learning.

The sprinters worked on 70+ issues during the 4 days. This a great number, you can find more thoughts about it in Gábor Hojtsy's blog post.

During the 4 days you consumed 134 pcs of Túró Rudis, 132 ps of Marzipan ladybugs, 260 cans of beer, 60 kilograms of different fruits and 7 kilograms of nuts."

Next year

If any of that sounds good you should attend next year, 6-9 August 2015, I'm very excited about returning. Even the founder of Drupal, Dries Buytaert regrets not attending! Maybe he will join us too next year, that would be awesome!